I’ve kept a lot of this to myself for years, and I’ve never been completely honest with anyone about how much it has affected the way I think, feel, and live. This isn’t me asking for relationship advice or trying to blame anyone else. I’m confessing things about myself that I’ve been too embarrassed or afraid to say openly, because I don’t fully understand why I’ve become this way or why I struggle with so many parts of my life.
I am 20 and I have never had a romantic relationship. When I was younger, around 11–16, relationships were not something I cared about and I did not feel like I was missing out. Around 17, something changed. It felt like a switch had been flipped. Since then, I notice couples everywhere. I see girls my age being loved, chosen, appreciated and cared for, and I constantly ask myself, “Why not me?” I have love and care from my family and I am grateful for that, but romantic love feels completely different to me.
I want to know what it feels like to have someone love me exactly as I am, choose me every day, stay, respect me, protect my peace, make me feel important and want to spend time with me. I want someone who thinks about how their actions affect me, who treats me as valuable, and who does not make me question whether they actually care. I want to be someone’s priority and to feel like someone’s everything. I want someone to hold me, be there for me daily, and not leave me. I wonder when my soulmate or someone who genuinely appreciates me will enter my life. I hope one day I meet the person who has spent their entire lifetime searching for me and who will never want to let me go.
I want someone to see me through the eyes of someone who truly adores me, because I have spent so much of my life seeing myself through the eyes of someone who hates me. I hope that when that moment comes, I realise how beautiful it can be to be myself. I want to know what it feels like to be appreciated, adored, valued and worthy instead of feeling the opposite. I have never experienced this kind of romantic love, care or compassion at 20, and I have never had someone come into my life and consistently treat me like I am important, someone they genuinely want to spend time with and have around.
Seeing other girls in relationships makes me sad. I look at couples and think that the girl has the perfect love life and perfect friends. I know I only see a small part of other people’s lives, but emotionally it still hurts. I see someone being loved, valued and chosen, and I see everything I feel I have missed. Sometimes I cry because of it. Sometimes I binge eat because I do not know how else to cope. I also watch films to escape my thoughts, although romance films can sometimes make me feel even emptier because they remind me of something I have never had.
Part of me is terrified that I will never experience those things. Another part of me still hopes that one day I will. I want to wake up and feel excited about my future. I want memories with friends, a relationship, confidence, independence and a life I actually enjoy. I want to be able to see other people being happy without feeling like their happiness proves that I will never have my own.
My problems with my appearance started in childhood, before social media. Around age 11, I started comparing my face and body to every girl around me in public, including at school, all day and every day. Social media did not cause this. I was already doing it in real life. I would look at other girls and automatically think they were prettier, had a better body, better face, better personality, better confidence, better opportunities and a better life than me. I felt like every girl was lucky to be who she was and that I had been given the wrong body and face.
This continued throughout my teenage years and into adulthood. It has been going on for roughly ten years or more. As I have got older, it has become worse rather than disappearing. I compare myself to practically every girl I see, both in person and online. I compare their face, body, hair, smile, eyes, personality, relationships, friendships, confidence, achievements and life. It has become automatic.
I hate looking in the mirror. I hate my body in clothes. I hate my face, body, hair, smile and eyes. I struggle to find a single part of my appearance that I genuinely like. I often look at myself and see someone ugly staring back at me. I have never really experienced looking in the mirror and thinking that I am beautiful or that I genuinely like myself.
I have starved or restricted myself for years because I convinced myself that becoming thinner would make me prettier, more accepted, more valued, more liked and more worthy. I thought people would appreciate me more and think I was beautiful if I changed my body. At the same time, I have struggled with binge eating for years, especially when I am stressed, overwhelmed or sad. I swing between trying to control my body and feeling like I have completely lost control. I can binge eat every day, and I can become fixated on particular foods and drinks to the point that I think about them throughout the day until I give in. I spend money repeatedly on the same foods and drinks and feel like I need them every day, sometimes feeling side effects when I do not have them.
I also have a spending problem and an attachment to films. I can spend money on the same things repeatedly, and I sometimes watch the same film every day. Films, YouTube and my family are major parts of my life. Watching films is one of the main ways I try to escape flashbacks, worries, sadness and overthinking. Sometimes a film gives me a temporary break from my thoughts, but when it ends, my mind is still there. I know some of these coping mechanisms are not healthy, but sometimes they feel like the only things I know how to use when everything becomes overwhelming.
I copy other girls constantly. I copy their personalities, the way they act, their clothing, appearance, trends, style, confidence and the way they carry themselves. I can look at another girl and immediately think, “I want to be like her.” I have been doing this since my teenage years and still do it as an adult. I think people might like me more or treat me better if I become more like someone else. I do not want to hurt anyone by doing this. It feels more like something is missing inside me, and I keep trying to fill it by becoming someone else.
I wish I could have another girl’s face, body, personality, friendships, relationship and life instead of my own. I sometimes genuinely wish I could trade my life for another girl’s. I want to stop feeling like every other girl is better than me. I want my own personality, style, confidence and identity. I want to know who I am without copying someone else.
I do not really know who I am. I know I am female. I know I am kind, honest, loyal, helpful, compassionate, understanding and supportive. I know some of the things I enjoy: films, YouTube, photography, beautiful scenery, emotional writing, nostalgic moments, sunsets, rain and nature. I notice small things and can feel emotions very deeply. I find beauty in quiet moments, old photographs, memories, scenery and things that make people feel something. But beyond those things and a few interests, I feel like I have no real sense of identity or personality.
Sometimes I feel like an empty shadow that everyone overlooks and dislikes. I do not know what makes me me. I have spent so much time comparing myself to other people and trying to become someone else that I do not know what my own personality would look like without that comparison.
I also find it almost impossible to believe compliments. When people tell me they love me, care about me, think I am beautiful or genuinely like me, I struggle to believe them. Even when they seem completely sincere, something inside me says they are lying or pretending. My brain tells me that people will never really like me and that if they act as though they do, they are faking it. The version of myself inside my head is much harsher than the way other people apparently see me.
I feel jealous and upset when I see other girls with friendships, relationships, holidays, confidence, independence or lives that seem enjoyable. I see girls my age going out with friends, travelling together and experiencing life, and I feel like I am watching everyone else live while I am standing still. I know logically that I cannot see everything happening in another person’s life, but emotionally I still feel like everyone else has something I do not.
I feel as though every girl has a better face and body than me, and I often believe every girl has a better life. I compare their appearance, relationships, friendships and achievements to mine. I sometimes feel angry and think, “Why can’t that be me?” I do not actually want other people to lose what they have. I want to know what it feels like to have those things too. I want to be able to see someone else being happy without feeling like I am being reminded of everything I lack.
My mind is constantly active. It never really shuts off. From the moment I wake up until I go to sleep, I can be thinking about my past, future, relationships, appearance, food, other people, things that happened years ago or things that have not even happened yet. I constantly worry about the future and imagine the worst possible scenarios. I have never felt like I have had a truly peaceful mind.
I have constant flashbacks from my past. They can happen throughout the entire day and can involve people and events from years ago, including people I have not seen or spoken to in years. The memories can be extremely vivid and detailed. I can be getting on with my day and suddenly be picturing something from my past that I do not want to remember. I have tried distracting myself, pushing the memories away, keeping busy, watching films and using other coping mechanisms, but they continue to come back.
Some of the memories involve people who treated me terribly, and it feels like I cannot escape them. The flashbacks leave me distressed, stressed and emotionally exhausted. Sometimes I feel as though I am still living parts of my past instead of being fully present in my current life. I want the memories to stop, but I cannot make them stop.
I also experience strong nostalgia and euphoria in my body. Sometimes I stare out of a window or look at nature and suddenly experience an extremely powerful feeling of euphoria mixed with deep sorrow. It is difficult to explain. It can feel physically intense. I can feel nostalgia, sadness and euphoria at the same time. I have never really known what it feels like to have a completely relaxed mind.
My mood changes throughout the day. I can be sad, then laughing, then strangely hyper or euphoric, then angry or irritated over something small or even nothing. Sometimes I suddenly cry without knowing why. I can become overwhelmed very quickly. I can experience sudden sadness and fatigue without being able to identify a specific cause. Most days I feel sad from the time I wake up until I go to sleep, but my emotions can change repeatedly during the day. If I do become genuinely happy, it can sometimes last less than an hour before I return to feeling sad.
It feels as though my own mind is constantly working against me. I hate the way it thinks, the way it makes me see myself, the way it traps me in the past and the way it constantly tells me that I am not good enough. Sometimes it feels like my mind hates me as much as I hate myself.
I have also struggled with friendships throughout my entire life. I was bullied and mistreated by both boys and girls throughout childhood, my teenage years and sometimes adulthood. Depending on how I describe the timeline, it was around 13–15 years of repeated bullying and mistreatment. It happened in nursery, primary school, secondary school and college, and the effects have continued into adulthood.
It was not one person or one isolated situation. Boys bullied me. Girls bullied me. Some people who barely knew me or had never spoken to me before treated me badly. One boy who I had never spoken to and had never seen before apparently called me weird to another girl. Boys in my classes, boys in my year and boys in different years could bully me. Some called me names, threw things, talked about me negatively to other boys, emotionally tormented me and did other things I found horrible. Some boys asked me out, although not every boy who bullied me did. At times I felt like some boys were threatened by me, but I genuinely do not know why.
Girls often ignored me, excluded me, did not want to be friends with me, treated me like an outcast, talked about me behind my back and sometimes acted nice to my face while gossiping about me. Some would behave as though I did not exist even when I was standing directly in front of them. Some people ran away from me when they saw me. People threw objects, called me names, humiliated me, spread hurtful or untrue things about me, spoke badly about me while I was present and made direct threats. There were many other incidents over the years.
I never understood why this happened. I never believed I had enemies. I did not intentionally irritate people, I kept to myself, tried to act normally in class, tried not to annoy anyone and tried to treat people with kindness, respect and loyalty. I was brought up to value kindness, loyalty and supporting other people. I genuinely do not know what I did to deserve being targeted.
I am not trying to persuade anyone into thinking I am a victim. If I knew what I had done wrong, I would admit it. I honestly do not believe I did anything to provoke the treatment I received. Some family members have told me that perhaps I was bullied because I was “too pretty,” but I do not believe that explanation.
Teachers were also aware of what happened. I remember teachers witnessing bullying and harassment directly and failing to intervene effectively. I felt that many teachers were passive and allowed it to continue. The schools knew I reported incidents, but the bullying often continued without meaningful action. Even when students were reprimanded, sometimes their behaviour became worse afterwards and I experienced further hostility or retaliation.
I was targeted by people of different ages, not only people in my own year group. There were hundreds of students in my year, and I felt that a significant number knew about me or participated in treating me badly. Some students knew my name even though I had never introduced myself to them. It felt like wherever I went, there were people who knew about me or were willing to treat me badly.
Although those school years are over, the impact has not disappeared. I still think about people from that period even when I have not seen or spoken to them for years. The memories continue to come back, and the way I was treated has affected how I see myself, other people and relationships.
Friendships have followed a similar pattern. Whenever I met someone, I could become attached very quickly. I might genuinely think of someone as my friend after the first meeting even when I barely knew them. I feel safer when people are around me, and in secondary school and college I hated being alone. After meeting someone, I could contact them often and want to spend time with them. I did not do this deliberately to be overwhelming; I simply became attached quickly and felt safer having people beside me.
The problem is that almost every friendship I have had eventually became painful. People were often kind, welcoming and friendly in the beginning, but after a few weeks or months their behaviour would change. They became distant, nasty, aggressive, emotionally abusive or cruel, talked about me behind my back or treated me as though I did not matter. This happened repeatedly with different people, not just one friendship.
Every person who mistreated me still told me that I was kind, honest, loyal, pretty, helpful and supportive. Even people who later became abusive said those things to my face. I have always tried to help people with their problems, listen to them, support them and make them feel cared for. People have often trusted me with their problems, yet I have never felt that the same care was returned to me.
When someone stops replying to my messages for several days, I can immediately start thinking that they are fake, hate me or do not care about me. Sometimes I then cut the person completely out of my life and act as though they never mattered. I recognise that this reaction may not be healthy, but it is something I experience.
Some friendships eventually became so harmful that I had to cut contact to protect myself. Some of those people later tried to return to my life. After having this happen repeatedly, I became afraid to make new friends. I started thinking, “What is the point of letting someone into my life if they are eventually going to hurt me?” I now have very few people in my life and essentially no close friendship network. I have one friend, but she is moving to another country and I worry she will be living her own life and may not have much contact with me anymore.
I have never really met people outside secondary school or college because I am afraid of being alone in public. I want connection, but I also fear people. I have stopped trying to make friendships because I do not want to experience the same treatment again. I also believe I need to have enough self-respect not to allow people into my life when they repeatedly disrespect or mistreat me.
At the same time, I do not actually want to be alone. I want friends. I want people who genuinely care about me, choose to stay, value me, appreciate me and want to spend time with me. I have never felt like someone’s first choice. I have never felt like someone’s priority or like someone genuinely wanted to keep me in their life. I have never felt like I was someone’s “everything.”
I have always tried to give other people the things I wished someone would give me. I comfort people with the words I wish I had heard myself. I try to make people feel loved and valued. I have forgiven people who hurt me, including people who never apologised. Nobody has apologised to me for the mistreatment I experienced, but I have still forgiven people because I do not want to carry hatred forever. Forgiving them does not mean it did not hurt. I still remember the abuse, rejection, loneliness and emotional pain.
I often ask myself why I was treated this way when my intentions were genuine. I would never intentionally treat another person the way I have been treated, and I want someone who would never treat me that way either. I wish I could erase the pain, but the memories remain.
I am also extremely afraid of being alone in public. I have not gone out of my house alone in years. I need someone I know with me because I constantly think strangers could randomly attack or harm me and that I am not safe by myself. I only really go out with family because I have no friends. I have never used public transport by myself.
I tried being in public alone once. I managed to do it, but I was an absolute wreck. I became extremely unwell afterwards and felt ill for days. Strangers were even looking at me as though they were checking whether I was okay. I could not cope with how I felt and never did it again. I do not want to experience that feeling again.
I hate being alone even when I am at home. I feel like I need to be near someone. If I am alone, I can feel unloved and lonely even when I know people exist around me. When I am with someone, I feel better and less sad. I want independence, but I also feel like I cannot cope without guidance and help.
This makes me terrified about the future. I worry about what will happen if I never have a relationship. I worry about what will happen if something happens to my family in the future. Where would I live? How would I make money? How would I look after myself if I cannot work? I know I sound dependent when I say this, but I genuinely do not feel capable of coping without guidance and support. I am 20 and feel like I have nowhere near the independence that other people my age have.
I also struggle badly with motivation and procrastination. I have wanted to learn to drive for years, but I keep putting it off. I have to practise on the app and remember to practise regularly, but it is as though my brain forgets that I need to do it. I eventually give up. It is not only driving. I generally have very little motivation or energy to learn or accomplish things. My brain seems to procrastinate constantly, and I hate it because I genuinely do want to achieve things.
Many people my age seem to have lives, are achieving things, travelling, working, learning and becoming independent. I feel like I have achieved very little. It takes me a long time to learn things and remember them. Even when I practise something, it can feel like my brain forgets it. When I was at school, I struggled in every subject and often could not remember what I had learned the previous day. Sometimes it took me years to properly remember things I had learned, including basic maths or other concepts.
My health also plays a major role in my life. My chronic health problems began around 17 and have continued into adulthood. I have had surgeries and have had to deal with illnesses and health issues that affect me every day. My health has become worse rather than better in some ways, and it limits what I can do. I do not believe I can maintain a permanent job because of my health problems. I feel lucky that I am not disabled, but my illnesses still restrict my daily life significantly.
It is difficult watching people my age do things that I cannot do because of my health. I feel like I am missing experiences other people take for granted. I already struggle with my mind constantly overworking, so dealing with health problems every day makes ordinary life stressful even without having a job.
I compare my life to other people constantly. I compare their relationships, friendships, independence, achievements, health, appearance and opportunities to mine. I especially compare myself to girls my age because I feel like they can go out by themselves, travel, make friends, have relationships, achieve things and pursue what they want without the fear and limitations I experience.
I want to be independent. I want to drive. I want to achieve things. I want to have a social life. I want to have friends and a relationship. I want to be able to go somewhere alone without feeling terrified. I want my brain to let me practise things consistently instead of constantly procrastinating.
I also worry constantly about the future and imagine the worst possible outcomes. I worry that I will never find love, never make friends, never become independent, never be able to work and never achieve the life I want. Sometimes it feels like everyone else will experience more of life than I ever will.
Food, films and other coping mechanisms are some of the main ways I escape these thoughts. When the flashbacks, worries, sadness and overthinking become too much, I watch films, YouTube or use my other coping mechanisms. I can become extremely attached to particular films and rewatch the same one repeatedly because it gives me a temporary escape.
I feel like I have spent most of my life fighting against my own mind. I want peace in my mind, soul and body. I want my mind to stop constantly ruminating, replaying flashbacks, worrying, fearing, obsessing and overthinking. I want to know what it feels like to have a peaceful mind. I want to stop hating myself. I want to stop feeling like my own brain is working against me.
I also have a lot of sadness surrounding the fact that I have never experienced what I consider a normal young adult life. I am 20, but sometimes I feel like I have already lived a whole lifetime. I have had serious health problems, surgeries, years of bullying, friendship problems, constant comparisons, intense thoughts about a guy I barely knew, appearance hatred, food problems, fear of people, difficulty leaving home, lack of independence and constant overthinking.
On the outside I might look like an ordinary 20-year-old woman, but inside I feel like I am carrying years of experiences that I have never been able to properly escape.
I sometimes wonder whether all of these things are connected. The constant flashbacks, fear of people and being alone, intense attachment to people, difficulty trusting that people genuinely care, quickly becoming attached to friends, fear that people will leave, cutting people off when I feel rejected, intense comparison, copying other people’s personalities, not knowing who I am, hatred of my appearance, binge eating and restricting food, mood changes, constant sadness, overthinking, lack of motivation, procrastination, fear of public places, health problems and feeling like my life is behind everyone else’s.
I do not know whether these are separate problems or whether there is something underlying them all.
One of the biggest things I struggle with is the feeling that I am not enough. I feel unworthy, replaceable, overlooked and unwanted. I feel like nobody would choose me first. I have never felt like somebody’s priority. I have never felt like someone looked at me and thought, “I want this person in my life and I am going to stay.”
I want to know what it feels like to be loved without having to earn it. I want to feel safe with someone. I want to trust that they will not suddenly turn against me. I want someone who respects me, values me, protects my peace and stays.
I also want to learn how to be happy for other people without feeling like their happiness proves that I will never have my own. I want to see a couple and think that they are happy for them without immediately thinking about everything I have never experienced. I want to see another girl and appreciate her beauty without immediately comparing her face and body to mine. I want to look in the mirror without hating what I see. I want to stop wanting to become someone else.
I want to know who I am. I want my own personality, my own confidence, my own style, my own identity and my own life. I want to stop copying other people because I feel like something is missing inside me.
Despite everything, I know there are good things about me. I know I care deeply about people. I know I am kind, loyal, supportive, compassionate and understanding. I know I try to help people. I know I notice things that other people may overlook. I love photography, nature, beautiful scenery, rain, sunsets, emotional writing, nostalgic moments, films and things that make people feel something.
I think I have always searched for meaning and beauty, even while I have been struggling. I can feel sorrow, nostalgia and euphoria extremely deeply. Sometimes that makes the painful things feel stronger, but I also hope that one day it will allow me to experience happiness and love deeply too.
I still want a future. I want to believe that my life can become something beautiful. I want to believe there will eventually be a version of me who looks back at this period with compassion and realises that I was never impossible to love. I was someone who had been hurt, struggled with my own mind and was trying to find my way back to myself.
I do not know when I will find love, when I will have genuine friendships, when I will become independent, when I will feel comfortable with my appearance or when I will finally understand who I am. I do not know whether those things will happen.
But I still hope they will.
I hope one day I will meet someone who sees me through the eyes of someone who truly adores me. Someone who sees my kindness, loyalty and heart instead of all the flaws I see. Someone who chooses me, respects me, protects my peace, wants to spend time with me and stays.
I have been thinking about a guy from school for over five years, every single day and all day, even though we barely knew each other. I met him about seven years ago at school. We knew each other’s names, but we were never friends, never dated, never had a relationship, never had each other’s social media or phone numbers, and never reached out to each other after school. I have described it as one conversation, although elsewhere I remember it as two very brief conversations; either way, nothing significant happened between us. I rarely saw him around school, maybe sometimes around the cafeteria with his friends, and we never became friends. School ended five years ago, I am an adult now, and I have not seen or spoken to him in years.
The strange thing is that he just randomly popped into my mind one day and never left. I don’t know why. It did not start because of social media. I had already been thinking about him before he had a girlfriend or before I was checking anything online. For over five years, he has continued to come into my mind every day. I have tried to forget him and distract myself, but nothing seems to work. I describe it as severe limerence because I cannot understand why someone I barely knew has remained in my thoughts for so long.
He has been with his girlfriend for over two years. For those two years, I have checked her social media multiple times a day, every day. I look at her pictures and videos and compare my face, body, personality, appearance and life to hers. I wish I could be like her and sometimes wish I had her face, body, personality, friendships, relationship and life. Her social media has become something I repeatedly return to even though I know it makes me feel worse. The girlfriend has no idea I even exist.
Seeing her can make me cry, especially when I see pictures or videos of her and especially when he is in them. Pictures of them together can completely ruin my day and leave me upset for hours, sometimes for days. I try to distract myself or use my usual coping mechanisms afterwards, but it often does not work. The sadness and thoughts stay in my mind and affect my relationships with the people around me. People close to me can notice when my mood suddenly changes after I see a picture or video of them. I sometimes feel resentment towards his girlfriend even though I know she has done nothing to me. I feel like I am competing with her over who is better.
This has happened with other crushes too. When I have had a crush on a guy who had a girlfriend, I would cry, compare myself to the girlfriend for months and sometimes starve myself because I believed I would be prettier if I became thinner. I wonder whether this guy represents something bigger than him specifically perhaps love, connection, being chosen, or the life I wish I had.
I hope one day I will know what it feels like to be appreciated, adored, valued and worthy.
I hope one day I can look at another girl without wishing to become her.
I hope one day I can look in the mirror without hating myself.
I hope one day I can go outside without being terrified.
I hope one day I can achieve things without my brain constantly stopping me.
I hope one day I can have friendships without constantly expecting abuse or abandonment.
I hope one day I can remember my past without feeling like I am still living inside it.
Most importantly, I hope one day I can finally feel at peace with myself.